Guns are not the problem America, you are

Let me make this clear; America’s school shooting epidemic isn’t about guns. It’s about you, America. And until you stop beating your chest and pointing fingers, these kinds of tragedies will continue. If you really want to end the senseless loss of our children’s lives stop making false claims and baseless accusations against the National Rifle Association and millions of law-abiding gun owners everywhere, and take a good hard look in a mirror.

What you’ll see there depends on how truthful you’ll want to be with yourself. Do you see someone who has watched the moral decay of American society without speaking out about it? Without doing anything about it?

Have you stood idly by and allowed the fabric of our great American society to be rent by posturing talking heads on television? Do you revel in division?

Do you see someone who has actively participated in political propaganda for either side of the raging gun debate in America for their own gain – ideological, financial or political?

Or do you simply see apathy?

What changed in recent decades that put us in the situation we now are faced with? It sure isn’t gun ownership. Kids played outdoors with BB guns without maliciously harming each other for decades. High schoolers had deer rifles in their trucks, on school grounds, and no one blinked an eye. There were even school rifle teams and extra-curricular gun clubs. And yet no one got killed.

Nowadays, a 7-year-old can be expelled for biting out pieces of his breakfast pastry to make it look like a gun. Don’t believe me? Read it.

Somewhere along the way we have lost the skill of raising responsible, emotionally well-rounded children. That is the very simple sum of it.

Basic child-rearing has become a lost art. Parents have become friends, discipline is verboten and our kids aren’t being taught right from wrong anymore. There are no winners or losers, only participation matters. Seemingly, every social norm of a few decades ago has now been turned upside down – and we are paying a dear price for it.

Our kids are willingly exposed to graphic feature films, violent first-person video games, and rampant nationwide drug abuse. Single parents and broken homes are the norm. We accept behaviors from our children that would never have been allowed when we were that age – foul language, disrespect and disobedience to name a few.

Our kids see the news too you know. They see our vile behavior on display and the glee associated with it by media all too willing to air the worst of it – in the most shocking way possible. Fame is the name of the game, if it bleeds it leads. You get the point.

All of these things and plenty more, result in narcissistic children without a moral compass, screaming for attention and willing to gain it by any means necessary. Their sense of reality is lost, along with their chance at an innocent childhood.

Right now, when parents tears have yet to dry, anti-gun activists will be rallying to impose some new form of gun control, most likely the ban of semi-automatic firearms like the AR-15, lecturing us about the ability these guns have to cause large numbers of deaths, and insisting that only lunatics want or need these types of guns. Whether they are right or wrong on this position is irrelevant.

A shooter armed with a pump-action shotgun loaded with buckshot, a very typical hunting configuration, could wreak untold havoc in the same amount of time. Do you mean to tell me that there is a threshold on how many children are gunned down in deciding what to ban?

But here, we are missing the point entirely. What is going on in the minds of these kids is the real problem. The thought process and reason that would compel them to inflict great violence and death on others is the problem – not the method on how they choose to do it.

Our kids are killing each other and all we can seem to manage is for one side to scream “Ban Guns, Guns are Evil!” and the other to pound their chest and cry “Constitution! 2nd Amendment!”

Well, neither is fixing the problem is it?

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About John Floyd

John is a freelance writer and lives in northeast Maine. His background includes work as a hunting and fishing guide, certified firearms instructor and as a United States Army Non-commissioned Officer. He covers outdoors topics and the politics and policies that affect traditional, rural lifestyle. He can be reached at john@tuckerridge.me or on Facebook @writerjohnfloyd

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John Floyd

John is a freelance writer and lives in northeast Maine. His background includes work as a hunting and fishing guide, certified firearms instructor and as a United States Army Non-commissioned Officer. He covers outdoors topics and the politics and policies that affect traditional, rural lifestyle. He can be reached at john@tuckerridge.me or on Facebook @writerjohnfloyd